In between a typically sloppy Sunday morning game from London and a shockingly one-sided blowout victory by the Bills in Kansas City, Week 5 featured a bevy of wild finishes and dramatic victories. Some of what happened in those games might have just been a one-off or something random, but let's see what stands out as meaningful takeaways from the four closest contests.
In the Chargers' come-from-behind win over the Browns, a series of fourth-down conversions showed uncommon aggressiveness. In the Packers' overtime victory at the Bengals, there were five straight missed kicks and some questionable game management. In the Vikings' walk-off triumph over the Lions, Detroit got a little unlucky, while Minnesota needs to get back to a former staple. In the Eagles' comeback against the Panthers, old mistakes returned.
Let's start with the shootout in Los Angeles, where the teams combined for 41 points and 403 yards in the fourth quarter alone:
Jump to a matchup:
Browns-Chargers | Packers-Bengals
Lions-Vikings | Eagles-Panthers
Chargers 47, Browns 42
Brandon Staley is on a different level. Over the past 15 years and especially across the past five years, coaches have gotten much more aggressive and collectively made better decisions on fourth downs. Announcers and media members haven't necessarily caught up -- and coaches are still too conservative on the whole -- but going for it on fourth down isn't controversial in the way it was when the Patriots tried to seal a game over the Colts by going for it on fourth-and-2 in 2009.
No team made more mistakes on fourth down or with its game management over the past decade than the Chargers. Norv Turner, Mike McCoy and Anthony Lynn led the Chargers to week after week of infuriating, inexplicable late-game scenarios, and while the players were also to blame for some of those problems, the team often struggled to get out of its own way.
All of this makes what Staley has done over the first five weeks of his tenure with the Chargers all the more fascinating. Coachspeak about being aggressive and trusting your players is one thing, but as we've seen with coaches such as Joe Judge, they're often terrified of implementing that in practice. Staley has a defensive background, but many of his best players are on offense, so L.A. has been incredibly aggressive in going for it on fourth down. On Sunday, it almost unquestionably won the Chargers an exhilarating shootout against the Browns.
Let's review the fourth downs that Staley's offense faced in the second half and how they helped fuel the Chargers' 14-point comeback. I'll also use the Play Finder tool from Pro Football Reference to try to find how often coaches went for it in similar situations over the past decade, just to contextualize how aggressive Staley was with his offense. You'll see a common trend:
Fourth-and-2 on L.A.'s 24-yard line, 10:34 left in third quarter, trailing 27-13
What coaches usually do: Punt 100% of the time
Staley kept his offense on the field and ran a power play with Austin Ekeler, gaining 9 yards. Teams might go for a fourth-and-2 deep in their own territory in total blowouts or deep into the fourth quarter, but only teams such as the Colts and Ravens would typically consider going for it in this sort of situation. This drive had another fourth down later on.
Fourth-and-7 on Cleveland's 22-yard line, 7:45 left in third quarter, trailing 27-13
What coaches usually do: Kick a field goal 100% of the time
Most coaches are comfortable these days going for it on fourth-and-1, but they're far more conservative than most models suggest they should be once offenses need 3 yards or more to convert. Teams in the third quarter trailing by multiple scores from this range kicked field goals every time, despite the fact that they were trailing by more than a touchdown and about to hand the ball back to the other team after the play. Justin Herbert threw a 12-yard completion to Keenan Allen to extend the drive, then scrambled in for a 9-yard touchdown two plays later, getting the Chargers within one score.
Fourth-and-4 on Los Angeles's 41-yard line, 9:10 left in fourth quarter, trailing 35-28
What coaches usually do: Punt 100% of the time
Down by a score in the fourth quarter, while teams get more aggressive in no-man's-land, they typically don't want to run the risk of handing the opposing team a short field and going down two scores. Of course, punting hands the opposing team the ball and gives it a shot at going up two scores anyway. I didn't include this in the analysis, but with the Browns gashing Staley's defense for most of the day, possessing the football probably meant a lot more in this game than field position.
Here, Herbert scrambled out of the pocket and launched up a low-percentage pass to Mike Williams down the sideline, only for backup Browns corner A.J. Green to commit pass interference. Again, this drive would face another fourth down.
Fourth-and-8 on Cleveland's 24-yard line, 7:48 left in fourth quarter, trailing 35-28
What coaches usually do: Kick a field goal 100% of the time (in a small sample)
Down seven points, coaches almost always see this as a scenario in which they need one possession to tie and two possessions to win. When they work with that logic, it's easy to talk themselves into the field goal they'll eventually need anyway, even if they're down a touchdown with eight minutes to go. Teams are more aggressive about going for the touchdown when this is fourth-and-2 or less, but they just don't go for it on fourth-and-this-long with the possibility of getting points on the board.
The Chargers did go for it and converted when Herbert found Allen for a 20-yard gain. Defenses are also prone to committing penalties on these stressful fourth-down tries, and Browns corner Greedy Williams held on the play, which would have also given the Chargers a fresh set of downs. Ekeler scored a touchdown on the next play to tie the game at 35. The Chargers didn't have to face a fourth down the rest of the way.
Those are four fourth-down attempts where I wasn't able to find a single comparable example of another team going for it from a similar down and distance, at a similar time and in a similar game situation. The Chargers went for it all four times, succeeded all four times and turned those fourth downs into touchdowns. Their fourth-down conversions generated 11.6 expected points; that's the most for any team on offense on fourth down in a game this season.
Any coach is going to look like a genius when they go for it on fourth down and succeed, and it remains to be seen whether Staley will continue to go for it if and when his team doesn't have the same level of success on fourth down, but he has said all the right things publicly. Herbert & Co. had to do incredible work on the field to fuel their comeback, but I can't think of a game in which a coach was more aggressive on fourth down and it more directly led to a team's victory than Sunday's win over Cleveland.
The Chargers still have some rough spots. If you thought that was too effusive, let's dial it back a bit, because Staley almost cost his team the game with what happened at the very end. After the Chargers finally came up with a stop and got the ball back at midfield down by a point, they quickly drove inside the red zone. On third-and-2, Ekeler ran for a first down and slid down inbounds at the 3-yard line, forcing the Browns to use their final timeout with 1:38 to go. From here, the Chargers could have simply ran the clock down before kicking a chip-shot field goal to win.
Instead, we got a beautiful farce. The Chargers ran duo and handed the ball to Ekeler, who clearly knew the situation and didn't want to score. The Browns, one of the most analytically inclined teams in the league in their own right, recognized that their most viable way to win was to let him score and get the ball back with as much as time as possible. With Ekeler hemming and hawing at the line, five Browns defenders surrounded Ekeler and pushed him into the end zone for a touchdown. The Chargers then came up short on the ensuing 2-point try, meaning that the Browns could win the game with a touchdown on their upcoming drive.
The better decision was almost assuredly to kneel three times and kick a 23-yard field goal from the hash of Tristan Vizcaino's choosing. Vizcaino had missed two extra points earlier in the game, which would worry me as a coach, but 23-yard field goals are 10 yards closer than extra points. Over the past decade, in the final two minutes of the game, kickers have hit field goals in the 22-24 yard range 45 out of 46 times. We're looking at a success rate north of 95%.
There's no way the Chargers can say that they were going to stop the Browns from scoring a touchdown 95% of the time with 1:30 or so left to go in the game, and that score would have either tied the game (if the Chargers succeeded on their 2-point try) or won it outright (if the Chargers missed). The Chargers have had kickers miss chip shots in the past, but they've also had running backs fumble inside the 2-yard line, too. Forget the numbers. It was clear what the Browns wanted Staley and Ekeler to do, and the Chargers fed into that. As good as Staley was in other situations, this move nearly cost them the game.
The Chargers need a kicker they can trust. Vizcaino has now missed four of his 14 extra point attempts this season. I don't know whether Staley would have kneeled and kicked if he had Justin Tucker to fall back on, but if he chose to try to score because he didn't trust Vizcaino, the franchise needs to rectify that situation immediately. Vizcaino nearly cost the Chargers a chance at overtime by missing an extra point in the fourth quarter, although they came up with a stop to get the ball back.
I'm worried about injuries for the Browns. While Browns fans undoubtedly recognize that they could be 5-0 with a couple of more first downs in the fourth quarter against the Chargers and Chiefs, it's hard to fault their level of play. They've weirdly looked better in their losses to the Chargers and Chiefs than they did in the wins over the Texans and Vikings. The Browns are a talented, well-coached team, and they're still well-positioned to make it to the playoffs.
My concern, though, is that they are already struggling with injury issues. They came into this game without defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, left tackle Jedrick Wills Jr. and cornerback Greg Newsome. Wideout Jarvis Landry is already on injured reserve, and quarterback Baker Mayfield is playing through a torn labrum in his non-throwing shoulder. Mayfield looked awful in the Vikings game, although he was much better against the Chargers on Sunday.
By the end of Sunday's loss, several other key contributors were missing. Star cornerback Denzel Ward came into the game with a neck injury and left after nine snaps without returning. Fellow defensive backs Williams and M.J. Stewart also left the game and did not return. Prized 2020 free-agent addition Jack Conklin, who has a history of knee issues, was forced out of the game in the fourth quarter with a knee injury. Wills and Conklin each played at least 90% of the snaps last year at tackle; by the end of this game, the Browns were using rookies Blake Hance and James Hudson there.
It's impossible to avoid feeling those losses. After the game, coach Kevin Stefanski admitted that he was more inclined to run the ball on third-and-long before the Chargers took the lead because the Browns were playing a pair of backup tackles. The secondary gave up a long touchdown pass on a blown coverage to Mike Williams. Green, filling in at corner, committed a crucial pass interference penalty. At 3-2, things don't get easier for Cleveland; its three-game homestand begins with a matchup against the undefeated Cardinals next Sunday.
Packers 25, Bengals 22 (OT)
I'm not worried about Mason Crosby (yet). Only veteran kickers get to survive the sort of game Crosby had for the Packers on Sunday. He has been kicking for the Packers long enough to share the field with Brett Favre as a rookie back in 2007, so Sunday's game seemed like an aberration. His streak of converting 27 consecutive field goals collapsed in spectacular fashion, as the 37-year-old missed an extra point in the second quarter before missing kicks from 36, 40 and 51 yards in the fourth quarter and overtime.
Crosby made good from 49 yards out to win the game for the Packers, who had to survive two narrow misses from Bengals kicker Evan McPherson to give their kicker a fourth shot at a game winner. The Packers could take an all's-well-that-ends-well approach and celebrate moving to 4-1, but this is a team with Super Bowl aspirations. We've seen veterans Adam Vinatieri and Stephen Gostkowski fall apart around or after disastrous games in recent years. Should the Packers be worried about Crosby?
I don't think so, if only because he has actually had a game like this before and gone right back to his usual self afterward. In Week 5 of the 2018 season, during the heights of the Matt Patricia era in Detroit, Crosby had a similarly dismal performance against the Lions. He missed an extra point and each of his first four field goal attempts in the controlled climate of Detroit's dome, costing the Packers dearly in what would eventually be a 31-23 loss. Green Bay even had him kick a 41-yard field goal with three seconds left on the clock to try to get the veteran a positive rep heading into the following week.
That ended up as a wasted year for the Packers, but Crosby wasn't a problem after his nightmare game. Over the remainder of the 2018 season, he went 18-of-21 on field goals and 25-of-25 on extra points. There's a mental element to the game for kickers that's impenetrable for outsiders, but he has been doing this since Matt LaFleur was the offensive coordinator at Ashland University. Crosby has overcome failure and dealt with plenty of pressure situations. If he struggles over the next couple of weeks, it's fair to be concerned that there might be something wrong. For now, though, I'm comfortable writing off his performance as a bad day in Ohio.
Zac Taylor's game management wasn't as bad as it might have seemed. The Bengals have picked up a couple of close wins this season when Joe Burrow has changed plays to passes. In overtime of Week 1, Burrow threw deep on a fourth-and-1 leak play to C.J. Uzomah for 32 yards, setting up the winning field goal. In Week 4 against the Jaguars, Burrow was given one play to run, saw a zero blitz and checked to a jailbreak screen the team hadn't run all season. He promptly hit Uzomah for 25 yards to set up another winning kick.
We don't entirely know what rights Burrow had to audible or whether Taylor sent out two plays for the final few possessions of the game on Sunday, but the Bengals got awfully conservative as it played out. I was disappointed at first glance, but after taking a closer look, I'm comfortable with the coach's choices.
After Crosby's miss, the Bengals drove the ball 27 yards on five plays to get on Green Bay's side of the field. At that point, Burrow was pressured into an incompletion on first down and threw a swing pass on second down. Facing a third-and-5, the Packers showed a five-man box against six Bengals defenders. They dared Cincinnati to run the ball, and given that the Bengals still had two timeouts with 31 seconds to go, I'm not horrified that they chose to do so.
Samaje Perine picked up only 3 yards, though, and the Bengals were left with a series of bad options. They chose to attempt a 57-yard field goal, and while I didn't like that move, ESPN's win expectancy model suggested that the Bengals were right to try the long field goal. McPherson missed, and once the Bengals won the coin toss in overtime, Burrow threw a horrific interception on the first play of the extra quarter.
After the next Crosby miss, a 10-yard Perine run gave way to Burrow hitting Ja'Marr Chase for 21 yards. Once the Bengals got on Green Bay's side of the field, though, they handed the ball to Joe Mixon three straight times before trying a 49-yard field goal on fourth-and-1, which McPherson missed. It sure looks like the Bengals got in "field goal range" and then took the ball out of their quarterback's hands while deciding to settle for a long kick.
Looking at what the Bengals saw when they lined up, though, I can't really fault the first two playcalls. They had seven blockers against a six-man box on first-and-10 and six blockers against a five-man box on second-and-6. Those are good running situations! It's not an accident that the Packers were trying to get them to run in those situations, but the Bengals simply need to execute in those situations. I didn't love third down, when they came out in 12 personnel with six offensive linemen and Auden Tate as their only wide receiver, but Mixon got 1.9 yards. The Bengals could have gone for it on fourth-and-inches, but a 49-yard field goal is different from a 56-yard attempt.
Of the four decisions to run the football before the failed field goal attempts, I will take issue with one of them. Taylor's game management hasn't exactly delivered sterling results during his 9-27-1 run as a head coach, so I understand why the default is to be skeptical of his choices, but I think the playcalls were defensible. Cincinnati just didn't execute.
Vikings 19, Lions 17
The Lions are better than their record. I'm not alone in feeling this way, and their Week 1 loss to the 49ers wasn't quite as close as the final moments made it seem, but the Lions don't deserve to be 0-5. After losing in crushing fashion on a last-second 66-yard field goal to the Ravens in Week 3, they were felled by a far more unlikely foe: a winning field goal from a Vikings kicker. After Detroit went up 17-16 with 41 seconds to go on a D'Andre Swift touchdown and a successful 2-point conversion, Greg Joseph hit a 54-yard try as time expired to break Detroit hearts for the second time in three weeks.
Dan Campbell was distraught after the game, but let's start there. Did the Lions' coach make the right decision in going for two down one point? My first instinct was yes. The Lions came into the game as 10-point underdogs, and when you're that significant of an underdog, you want to try to shorten the game. Their chances of converting a 2-pointer and then keeping the Vikings from scoring were better than their chances of hitting an extra point, stopping the Vikings from scoring in regulation and then winning in overtime.
ESPN's win expectancy models are built by people who are a lot smarter than me, though, and the model disagreed, suggesting that the Lions reduced their win expectancy by more than 3 percentage points. The reason? While missing on a 2-pointer basically ends the game, converting it forces the Vikings to play aggressive football to try to win in regulation. With 37 seconds and two timeouts, Minnesota had enough time to try to get in field goal range for a Joseph try.
Of course, that's exactly what happened: Kirk Cousins hit three passes to his receivers for 46 yards, the Vikings used their two timeouts and a spike to stop the clock and Joseph hit his kick to win it. Win expectancy models aren't perfect -- and Campbell might have felt like Joseph (who missed a 49-yarder in the fourth quarter) wasn't a great kicker or that his defense had done an excellent job in limiting the Vikings to 16 points before the final drive -- but models pay attention to how one coach's decision can impact the other's. I can't fault him for backing his team, but it's worth noting that the numbers were not in his favor.
He was in tears after the loss, and I can't blame him. Detroit has already lost two games in which it held a win expectancy of 90% or more in the final two minutes. The only team to do that last season was the Falcons, and the only team over the past decade to have more than two of those losses in an entire season is the 2015 Giants. Campbell's team is playing competitive football, and it won't be this unlucky the rest of the way. The Lions get the Bengals and Eagles at home over the next three weeks before their Week 9 bye.
The Vikings need to get back to play-action. As one of the many NFL teams running the Gary Kubiak/Mike Shanahan offense, we expect the Vikings to use heavy doses of play-action in their offense. Under former offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski, the Vikings ramped up their play-action usage and improved Kirk Cousins' efficiency in the process, netting the quarterback his first and only Pro Bowl nod in a Vikings uniform. In Stefanski's lone full season as coordinator in 2019, Cousins threw off play-action just under 28% of the time.
When Stefanski left for the Browns, the Vikings promoted Gary Kubiak into the offensive coordinator's role. Things stayed the same, as Cousins threw off play-action just over 28% of the time. He retired over the offseason and gave way to someone who should also be very familiar with the tenets of his offense: Klint Kubiak, his 34-year-old son. With just about every meaningful piece of the offense returning for 2021 besides lineman Riley Reiff, there was little reason to think things would change.
Well, through five games, Cousins' play-action rate isn't 28%; it's just over 18%. On Sunday, against one of the worst defenses in the league, Cousins was 1-of-4 on play-action for 9 yards and a QBR of 3.8. Coaches sometimes claim that a team didn't establish the run enough to get their play-action game going, but in addition to that trope not holding up under detailed analysis, the Vikings had plenty of success running the football.
While they weren't successful with play-action this past week, Cousins has continued to be a much better quarterback with the help of a play fake. Between 2019 and 2020, he posted a 76.4 QBR when the Vikings used play-action against a mark of 52.4 when he just dropped back and threw. So far this season, the numbers are similar; he is posting a 70.2 QBR with play-action and a 51.0 mark without it. Those numbers are roughly the difference between Justin Herbert and Jimmy Garoppolo as passers this season. Wouldn't you want to turn your quarterback into Herbert more frequently if you could?
I would encourage the Vikings to consider incorporating more play-action, but I would also understand if they waited until after their Week 7 bye. Next week, Minnesota will match up with the Panthers, who have terrorized teams using play-action so far. Quarterbacks have averaged 8.9 yards per attempt and a 58.2 QBR when they've used play-action this season. Against the Panthers, those passers are 12-of-25 for 76 yards. They're averaging 4.4 yards per attempt and posting a QBR of 11.5, the second-worst mark in football.
Eagles 21, Panthers 18
The Panthers can't count on Sam Darnold yet. Carolina would be 4-1 right now if its quarterback had played better on Sunday. With the Eagles stifled for the vast majority of Sunday's game, Darnold's struggles kept Philly in the game and eventually helped drive its comeback. The 2018 No. 3 overall pick finished 21-of-37 passing for 177 yards with a touchdown and three picks. After producing just two giveaways over Carolina's three-game winning streak to start the season, he has been intercepted five times through two weeks.
I realize that you don't need to be a professional sportswriter to figure out that a quarterback would be better with one of the league's best weapons on the field, but it's worth mentioning just how different Darnold has looked without Christian McCaffrey in the lineup:
McCaffrey made Darnold's life much easier during that two-plus-game stretch to start the season. On throws within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, Darnold ranked third in QBR across Weeks 1-2 and 25th in those same throws since. In addition to being excellent with the ball in his hands, McCaffrey's presence as a receiver discourages teams from blitzing and eliminates a simple safety valve for Darnold to deal with pressure. His sack rate has more than tripled without McCaffrey on the field.
When Darnold would fall behind schedule with the Jets and be stuck trying to make up big chunks of yardage, he made bad decisions with the football. His three interceptions on Sunday came out of second-and-9, second-and-12 and first-and-20. None of the throws was a wise decision. Two were extremely difficult passes on throws from one hashmark to the far sideline, with one being an attempt to hit the hole against Cover 2 and the other an out thrown too late for anyone's comfort. The other was Darnold locking onto a covered DJ Moore. Royce Freeman was open underneath for a short gain on that third play; maybe Darnold feels more comfortable going there if McCaffrey is his halfback.
Either way, in a game the Panthers were dominating defensively, all Darnold needed to do for the majority was avoid major mistakes and keep the offense on the field long enough for the defense to get a rest. After a 10-point first quarter, the Panthers scored just six points on offense across their 11 remaining drives. Only one of those possessions took more than 3 minutes, 30 seconds off the clock. Their seven drives in the second half produced a total of six first downs. By win probability added, the Panthers were the second-most damaging offense in the league during Week 5.
The hope is that the Panthers get McCaffrey back against the Vikings next week, and their schedule isn't too arduous, given that they follow with games against the Giants and Falcons before a matchup with Darnold's old nemesis, the Patriots. With the Jets, the book on Darnold was that he would make some pretty passes and mix them in with bad decisions under duress. During Carolina's 3-0 start, it seemed like he was capable of more. I don't think we can render any decisions until the end of 2021 at the earliest, but this looked like the same old Darnold for most of Sunday.
The Eagles need to keep Jordan Mailata at left tackle. With their offensive line riddled with absences for the second consecutive season, the Eagles were unquestionably excited to welcome back their starting left tackle Mailata, who signed a four-year, $64 million extension in September. With Lane Johnson out for personal reasons, though, the Eagles opted to keep disappointing former first-round pick Andre Dillard at left tackle and moved Mailata into Johnson's spot on the right side.
You can understand why the Eagles decided to move him. While the 24-year-old is still incredibly inexperienced, having not played any college football before making his NFL debut a year ago, Mailata played some right tackle last season before moving to the blind side. Dillard, who is nominally the swing tackle behind Mailata and Johnson, hasn't been good anywhere. With Dillard practicing to play on the left side while Mailata was out over the past two weeks, the least disruptive choice was to move the better player to a less familiar role and keep Dillard in the spot where he's most familiar.
It didn't work. Mailata and Dillard both struggled, with Haason Reddick beating Mailata around the edge for two sacks. By the end of the game, the Eagles had essentially given up; they went with an unbalanced line at stretches, moving Mailata to the left side of the line as a sixth lineman outside of Dillard, while Dallas Goedert and Zach Ertz filled in as the de facto right tackles. The Eagles closed out the game with that look, but it's not sustainable for an entire game. Next week, whether Johnson is back or not, they need to install Mailata at left tackle and worry about finding a different solution on the right side. Better to have at least one solid tackle.